The Ossete area in Russia is known as North Ossetia–Alania, while the area south of the border is referred to as South Ossetia, recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Nauru as an independent state but by most of the rest of the international community as part of Georgia. Ossetian speakers number about 577,450, with 451,000 speakers in the Russian Federation recorded in the 2010 census.[5]

Ossetian is the spoken and literary language of the Ossetes, a people living in the central part of the Caucasus and constituting the basic population of the republic of North Ossetia–Alania, which belongs to the Russian Federation, and of the South Ossetia, which is de facto independent (belongs to the Georgian Republic according to most other states). Ossetian belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. Within Iranian it is placed in an Eastern subgroup and further to a Northeastern sub-subgroup, but these are areal rather than genetic groups. The other Eastern Iranian languages such as Pashto and Yaghnobi show certain commonalities but also deep-reaching divergences from Ossetic.

Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a sizable community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans, medieval tribes emerging from the earlier Sarmatians. It is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language may be the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the only other living Northeastern Iranian language.[6][7] Ossetian has a plural formed by the suffix -ta, a feature it shares with Yaghnobi, Sarmatian and the now-extinct Sogdian; this is taken as evidence of a formerly wide-ranging Iranian-language dialect continuum on the Central Asiansteppe. The names of ancient Iranian tribes (as transmitted through Ancient Greek) in fact reflect this pluralization, e.g. Saromatae (Σαρομάται) and Masagetae (Μασαγέται).[8]

The italicized portions above are Ossetian. Going beyond a direct transliteration of the Greek text, scholars have attempted a phonologicalreconstruction using the Greek as clues, thus, while τ (tau) would usually be given the value "t," it instead is "d", which is thought to be the way the early Ossetes would have pronounced it. The scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is: "dæ ban xʷærz, mæ sfili, (æ)xsinjæ kurθi kændæ" and "du farnitz, kintzæ mæ sfili, kajci fæ wa sawgin?"; equivalents in modern Ossetian would be "Dæ bon xwarz, me’fšini ‘xšinæ, kurdigæj dæ?" and "(De’) f(s)arm neč(ij), kinźi æfšini xæcc(æ) (ku) fæwwa sawgin".[11] The passage translates as:

—The Alans I greet in their language:
"Good day to you my lord's lady, where are you from?"
"Good day to you my lord's lady, where are you from?" and other things:
When an Alan woman takes a priest as a lover, you might hear this:
"Aren't you ashamed, my lordly lady, that your cunt is being fucked by a priest?"
"'"Aren't you ashamed, my lady, to have a love affair with the priest?"[10][11]

Marginalia of Greek religious books, with some parts (such as headlines) of the book translated into Old Ossetic, have been recently found.[citation needed]

It is theorized that during the Proto-Ossetic phase, Ossetian underwent a process of phonological change conditioned by a Rhythmusgesetz or "Rhythm-law" whereby nouns were divided into two classes, those heavily or lightly stressed. "Heavy-stem" nouns possessed a "heavy" long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type; "light-stem" nouns were stressed on their final syllable. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest (though admittedly scanty) records of Ossetian presented above.[12] This situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the "openness" of the vowel.[13] The trend is also found in a Jassicglossary dating from 1422.[14]

The phonetic realization of /s/ and /z/ varies between [s], [z] and [ʃ], [ʒ]. Voiceless consonants become voiced word-medially (this is reflected in the orthography as well). /tʃ/, /dʒ/, and /tʃʼ/ were originally allophones of /k/, /ɡ/, and /kʼ/ when followed by /e/, /i/ and /ɨ/; this alternation is still retained to a large extent.

Stress normally falls on the first syllable, unless it has a "weak" vowel (/ə/ or /ɨ/), in which case it falls on the second syllable. In the Iron dialect, definiteness is expressed in post-initially stressed words by shifting the stress to the initial syllable. This reflects the fact that historically they received a syllabicdefinite article (as they still do in the Digor dialect), and the addition of the syllable caused the stress to shift.[6]

In the course of centuries-long propinquity to and intercourse with Caucasian languages, Ossetian became similar to them in some features, particularly in phonetics and lexicon. However, it retained its grammatical structure and basic lexical stock; its relationship with the Iranian family, despite considerable individual traits, does not arouse any doubt.

Ossetic has abolished the grammatical category of gender which many Indo-European languages preserve until today.[6] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica 2006[16] Ossetian preserves many archaic features of Old Iranian, such as eight cases and verbal prefixes. It is debated what part of these cases are actually inherited from Indo-Iranian case morphemes and what part have re-developed, after the loss of the original case forms, through cliticiziation of adverbs or re-interpretations of derivational suffixes: the number of "inherited" cases according to different scholars ranges from as few as three (nominative, genitive and inessive) to as many as six (nominative, dative, ablative, directive, inessive). Some (the comitative, equative, and adessive) are secondary beyond any doubt.[17]

Verbs distinguish six persons (1st, 2nd and 3d, singular and plural), three tenses (present, past and future, all expressed synthetically), and three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative). The person, tense and mood morphemes are mostly fused. Passive voice is expressed periphrastically with the past passive participle and an auxiliary verb meaning "to go"; causative and reflexive meaning are also expressed by periphrastic constructions. Verbs may belong to one of two lexical aspects (perfective vs imperfective); these are expressed by prefixes, which often have prepositional origin. There is an infinitive (morphologically coinciding with the 1st person singular, but syntactically forming a nominal phrase), four participles (present and past active, past passive, and future), and a gerund. Vowel and consonant alternations occur between the present and past stems of the verb and between intransitive and transitive forms. Intransitive and transitive verbs also differ in the endings they take in the past tense (in intransitive verbs, the construction is, in origin, a periphrastic combination of the past passive participle and the verb "to be").[6] There are also special verb forms, such as immediate future tense that is transmitted by adding -inag to the verb and the auxiliary verb meaning "to be". Future Imperative is another special form that is transmitted through usage of independent particle iu. Yet another special verbal form that is used to reflect either an interrupted process or a process that has nearly been completed. This form is made up through the use of a particle sæi that is stuck between the prefix, usually fæ- and the verb.

Ossetic text written with Georgian script, from a book on Ossetian folklore published in 1940 in South Ossetia

Written Ossetian may be immediately recognized by its use of the Cyrillic letter Ae (Ӕ ӕ), a letter to be found in no other language using Cyrillic script. The father of the modern Ossetian literary language is the national poet Kosta Xetagurov (1859–1906).[6]

An Iron literary language was established in the 18th century, written using the Cyrillic script in Russia and the Georgian script in Georgia. The first Ossetian book was published in Cyrillic in 1798, and in 1844 the alphabet was revised by a Russian scientist of Finnish-Swedish origin, Andreas Sjögren. A new alphabet based on the Latin script was made official in the 1920s, but in 1937 a revised Cyrillic alphabet was introduced, with digraphs replacing most diacritics of the 1844 alphabet.

In 1820, I. Yalguzidze published a Georgian-script alphabetic primer, adding three letters to the Georgian alphabet.[18] The Georgian orthography receded in the 19th century, but was made official with Georgian autonomy in 1937. The "one nation – two alphabets" issue caused an uprising in South Ossetia in the year 1951 demanding reunification of the script, and in 1954 Georgian was replaced with the 1937 Cyrillic alphabet.

A Digor literary language was established in the late 19th century, using the Arabic script. It was abolished in 1939, five years before the Digor were deported to Siberia. Iron in Cyrillic is now the literary language for both dialects.

The table below shows the modern Cyrillic alphabet, used since 1937, with phonetic values for the Iron dialect in the IPA. Di- and tri-graphs in parentheses are not officially letters of the alphabet, but are listed here to represent phonemically distinctive sounds:

Modern Cyrillic alphabet

Letter

А

Ӕ

Б

В

Г

(Гу)

Гъ

(Гъу)

Д

Дж

Дз

Е

З

И

Й

К

(Ку)

Къ

(Къу)

Л

a

ӕ

б

в

г

(гу)

гъ

(гъу)

д

дж

дз

е

з

и

й

к

(ку)

къ

(къу)

л

IPA

/a/

/ə/

/b/

/v/

/ɡ/

/ɡʷ/

/ʁ/

/ʁʷ/

/d/

/d͡ʒ/

/d͡z/

/e/

/z~ʒ/

/i/

/j/

/k/

/kʷ/

/kʼ/

/kʷʼ/

/l/

Letter

М

Н

О

П

Пъ

Р

С

Т

Тъ

У

Ф

Х

(Ху)

Хъ

(Хъу)

Ц

Цъ

Ч

Чъ

Ы

м

н

о

п

пъ

р

с

т

тъ

у

ф

х

(ху)

хъ

(хъу)

ц

цъ

ч

чъ

ы

IPA

/m/

/n/

/o/

/p/

/pʼ/

/r/

/s~ʃ/

/t/

/tʼ/

/u, w/

/f/

/χ/

/χʷ/

/q/

/qʷ/

/t͡s/

/t͡sʼ/

/t͡ʃ/

/t͡ʃʼ/

/ɨ/

In addition, the letters ⟨ё⟩, ⟨ж⟩, ⟨ш⟩, ⟨щ⟩, ⟨ъ⟩, ⟨ь⟩, ⟨э⟩, ⟨ю⟩, and ⟨я⟩ are used to transcribe Russian loans.

The Latin alphabet (used 1923–1937)

Letter

A

Æ

B

C

Ch

Č

Čh

D

Dz

Dž

E

F

G

Gu

H

Hu

I

J

K

Ku

a

æ

b

c

ch

č

čh

d

dz

dž

e

f

g

gu

h

hu

i

j

k

ku

IPA

/a/

/ə/

/b/

/ts/

/tsʼ/

/t͡ʃ/

/t͡ʃʼ/

/d/

/d͡z/

/d͡ʒ/

/e/

/f/

/ɡ/

/ɡʷ/

/ʁ/

/ʁʷ/

/i/

/j/

/k/

/kʷ/

Letter

Kh

Khu

L

M

N

O

P

Ph

Q

Qu

R

S

T

Th

U

V

X

Xu

Y

Z

kh

khu

l

m

n

o

p

ph

q

qu

r

s

t

th

u

v

x

xu

y

z

IPA

/kʼ/

/kʷʼ/

/l/

/m/

/n/

/o/

/p/

/pʼ/

/q/

/qʷ/

/r/

/s~ʃ/

/t/

/tʼ/

/u, w/

/v/

/χ/

/χʷ/

/ɨ/

/z~ʒ/

In addition, the letters ⟨š⟩ and ⟨ž⟩ were used to transcribe Russian words. The "weak" vowels ⟨æ⟩[ə] and ⟨ы⟩[ɨ] are extremely common in the language.

While Ossetian is the official language in both South and North Ossetia (along with Russian), its official use is limited to publishing new laws in Ossetian newspapers. There are two daily newspapers in Ossetian: Ræstdzinad (Рæстдзинад, "Truth") in the North and Xurzærin (Хурзæрин, "The Sun") in the South. Some smaller newspapers, such as district newspapers, use Ossetian for some articles. There is a monthly magazine Max dug (Мах дуг, "Our era"), mostly devoted to contemporary Ossetian fiction and poetry.

Ossetian is taught in secondary schools for all pupils. Native Ossetian speakers also take courses in Ossetian literature.

^op. cit., pp. 55–6. The original, following Zgusta, translates only initials; presumably this is because although the uninflected forms may be inferred, no written records of them have been found to date.